


Don't Look

by Antipode



Series: I Was Lost Without You [6]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Custom Shepard (Mass Effect), F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27077506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antipode/pseuds/Antipode
Summary: Shepard saves Liara from Benezia on Noveria.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Series: I Was Lost Without You [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937521
Kudos: 31





	Don't Look

Liara tried and failed to stifle a sob of agony as she fumbled about the cold, grated metal floor, scrabbling for her pistol. Her limbs ached, her back was afire, and her vision swam before her. Weak fingers pawed at the handle of a gun before a swirl of dark violet engulfed her, grabbed her by the throat and shook her like a terrier shaking a rat before flinging her into a wall with a sickening sound. She shrieked in pain, clutched at her side, coughing, weeping. Somewhere, her friends were dying. She’d be joining them shortly.

“What a disappointing daughter you turned out to be,” the thing that wore her mother’s face chuckled darkly. Heeled boots on the floor rung out like the tolling of a doomsday bell. Biotic energy swirled and churned like a bruise in the air around her. The Matriarch leered down at her, looked at her with cold blue eyes, blue eyes that had once glimmered like star sapphires in the dappled light of Parnitha in an Armali park but now glared down in judgement like looming icicles, glinted like the blade of an executioner’s axe.

“Mother, please,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. Pain and sorrow tore through her. “Please, you have to fight him. You did it once before. This is not you, it is Saren. Please, mother. Please..?” She stretched out a pleading hand to the asari who had once cradled her on her knee, had once read to her from her first history book. Who had dried her tears, had cleaned her scrapes, had listened and nodded patiently to her troubles and sorrows and who had held her as she wept upon her shoulder.

The hand was knocked aside. Cold fingers grasped her by the throat and began to squeeze. 

“Find peace in the embrace of the Goddess,” the thing in Benezia’s skin snarled. It squeezed and squeezed. Liara felt the blackness begin to overwhelm her, felt it crawl out of the edges of her eyes to swallow her whole. She battered feebly at the hands squeezing the life out of her, her feet drumming a desperate cadence on the floor. All she could see were those hateful eyes, those cold lips curled into a brutal sneer. Her heart wept. She couldn’t fight this, couldn’t fight her own mother. It didn’t matter anymore. It would all be over soon.

A shot rang out.

The thing in her mother’s body convulsed, gaped at her in surprise, spat a cough of brackish blood onto her cheek. The fingers at her throat slackened. The hate seeped out of those sparkling blue eyes. Recognition seemed to flood into them. Recognition, and something else.

“Liara..?”

“Mother?”

Benezia collapsed against her, twitching only slightly. Goddess, she felt so light. Liara could feel something wet against her chest. She looked up in confusion.

Shepard stood, barely. She was drenched in blood; her nose looked re-broken, her armor was riddled with bullet-holes. There was a crescent-bladed knife sticking out of her thigh. Her right arm slumped uselessly at her side. In her left hand was a smoking pistol. She let the arm fall. Her emerald eyes were liquid, filled with the purest concern, the gentlest sorrow.

Liara felt a weak hand brush against her cheek. Benezia was glancing upwards at her, those eyes clouded over in pain. She was already slipping away.

“Liara… my daughter. Oh, my beautiful daughter…”

“I’m here, mother,” she whispered in a thick, rasping voice. The bruising in her throat made it difficult to speak. “I’m here.” A trembling hand stroked the side of her mother’s crest, cradled her head. Her scales were already growing cool.

“Goodnight, Little Wing,” Benezia choked. The hand gripped her collar, held on with every ounce of strength left in her frail, dying body. “I will… see you with the dawn.”

“Oh, mother…” Tears filled her eyes. Her breath caught. She trembled, shook, cradling the Matriarch’s body as the horrible comprehension of what had happened began to sink in, as the blackness of despair began to sink in. The body spasmed, convulsed. There was a terrible, soul-chilling rattle.

“Liara.”

A strong hand gently closed over her shoulder. A strong arm pulled her into a tender embrace. She buried her face in the crook of the human’s shoulder and sobbed, ignoring the cool, sticky metal, ignoring the awful sounds of her mother’s dying breaths. Her head strained to look back at the gut-wrenching sight of Benezia bleeding out into her lap but the hand wouldn’t let her, kept pulling her back in.

“Listen to my voice. I’m here,” Shepard whispered close to her aurals, a comforting hand stroking her back as she cried. “Don’t look, Liara. Don’t look.”

She gave herself totally into her sadness, her sorrow. Gave herself utterly to the shoulder, the arm, the warmth of that embrace. She wanted to scream, to rage. To tear the turian bastard that had done this to the kindest, noblest asari she’d ever known, limb from limb. She wanted to thank Shepard for saving her life, for setting her mother free, for having the strength to do what she could not. All she could do was cry.

“Don’t look,” Shepard whispered soothingly to her. “Just cry. Just let it out. That’s it. I’ve got you. You’re safe.

“You’re safe.”


End file.
